


Prisoners of War

by gorgonine



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Ishbal | Ishval, So much angst, baby roy and baby riza, fade to black? nothing to fade to black to? who knows certainly not me, i don't know anything about this timeline thing you speak of, no beta we die like [insert appropriate badass dead thingy here], non-linear timeline, traumatized roy and traumatized riza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24441286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgonine/pseuds/gorgonine
Summary: Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye, before and during the Ishvalan conflict.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	Prisoners of War

She is a prodigy, the instructors tell her. A sniper the likes of which have not been seen in decades. Her aim is eerily accurate and her nerves are harder than steel. It was only natural that, given both her outstanding performance and the number of causalities in the warfront, that she would be dispatched here one full year before her cadet training was technically over. 

Sometimes, she wonders if she should have slacked off a little.

She’s learned by now to identify the quality of sounds, the ones she can hear between the explosions. Screams of anger and screams of desperation have a subtle distinction of timbre, for all that the tone tends to blur when you hear them coming one after another. Shouts of the people who gloating, and the people who give orders to the soldiers- the times where these overlap are not for the faint of heart. The sounds of the people who have walked over the line from controlled madness to psychosis are easier to detect, but the mind shies away from them once they’re noticed, hiding them away with the screams that are less disturbing.  
  
And then there is the begging. The city is full of civilians- women and men and children. Most of them untrained in combat, most of them unable to do anything as they watched their loved ones get shot in front of them. Sometimes, though, desperation made them fling caution to the winds and attack anyway- like that one woman near the sergeant shouting orders to his men in the front line, face so haggard she could notice it from even here, eyes desperate and angry as she raises a fallen hunk of stonework to his head.

Here, they call her the Hawk’s Eye. 

Fingers on the trigger. Her body is shaking but her hands hold steady, as always. A squeeze, a spray. A startled soldier looking over his shoulder at his would-be killer and searching the skies in vain for his savior.

Not her first kill. Not her last.

Yellows and greys fade into the background, and a haze of red consumes Ishval.

* * *

Despite the literally foot-long checklist of precautions they took before every single experiment, explosions were inevitable in Berthold Hawkeye’s lab. Roy had learned very early on into his apprenticeship that the house being located in the middle of nowhere was not just because Berthold was a misanthrope eccentric. It was also because when Berthold calculated that a certain plausible explosion could cause structural damage, he could order his hapless apprentice to move all the materials out in the open and safely far off from the house; presumably while he worked on ways to make future explosions even bigger.

Roy was half convinced this was all a conspiracy cooked up by his Aunt to burn away what she darkly referred to as his excess energy. So he’d accidentally upturned a couple of parked cars when he tried to cobble together alchemical practice from a bunch of old books left behind by the clients, big deal. She really didn’t have to shout at him for two days straight and send him away to the middle of nowhere in retaliation. 

Although he really hadn’t complained all that much about it at the time. Maybe an alchemist in central city would have been better, but the idea of learning alchemy trumped everything else. Clearly, he decided as he lugged yet another box of fireworks out the yard and to the vegetation-free space he and Master Hawkeye had manged to burn up after just three days worth of effort-, his priorities had become completely skewed. Once in a while, he cursed the day Alchemy had sunk it’s seductive claws into him, refusing to ever let him go back to a normal life filled with good food and soft beds and possibly a pretty blonde girl to keep him company and massage away his cares after a long day at work.

That was more like it. He could see it clearly now; a fireplace, a couple of elegant-yet-overstuffed couches. He would be back from work and reclining on one- yeah, he could get one of those footstools too. He’d be a big, important man- a military officer, like general Grumman. You couldn’t get more important than the military in Amestris. He’s have a couple of vicious pet dogs who would wag their tails at just him, his two kids, and (clearest of them all) that one girl who had soft brown eyes and blonde hair kept short and always welcomed him with a small smile on her face-

She stared unsmilingly at him, and Roy groaned. Typical, she wouldn’t even smile in his damned daydreams-

“Roy, do you want help?”

Roy jumped with an unmanly yelp and blushed red as the object of his imagination snuck upon him. He was fully certain that Master Hawkeye would not appreciate him daydreaming about his only daughter, but he was a little more worried about what Riza herself would think if she ever found out. 

“Roy?” she asked him, frowning, “Are you all ri- watch out!”

The warning came a little too late to save his package- Roy tripped neatly over the root he’d not seen and flailed in a definitely undignified manner before losing battle with gravity. Riza tried to help him win, but his flinging had managed to hook her over the waist and they landed in a crumpled heap on the ground, with her on top of him.

Roy glumly discovered that what he’s been doing before was not blushing, it was the distant infant relative of blushing. His face felt like it could heat up an egg, and there was no way in hell she couldn’t tell what he was thinking and he was going to crawl back and hide under the covers till Master Hawkeye dragged him back to the yard. This was all so embarrassing and he had to force himself to meet her eyes as he tried awkwardly to scramble away from her so he could preserve at least some of his dignity-

Roy paused midscramble, his eyes widening.

Oh.

 _That_ was what it looked like when she smiled.

* * *

Ishval is washed out in comparison to Amestris- all grey buildings and yellow sands in the horizon. The people have reddish skin burned brown by the sun and wear dull colors; the only bright thing about them are their eerie eyes.

He comes here with a burning desire to prove himself to everyone he knows. To himself, to his friends and colleagues. To his family and to his Alchemy teacher, now dead for three years. Possibly to a quiet blond girl with soft eyes and a trusting smile who he’s not heard from in months. Sounded like Military Academy was exactly as hard as it had been when he was in there.

Probably a good thing, in this case. The Ishval war was notorious for having dragged out this long (six years), and she might have worried about him getting posted here. Which, while being a perfectly natural reaction and all, was somewhat unnecessary- he really could take care of himself now. 

He idly wondered if she would run up to him to hug him when he came back from the war, waiting for him at central station with his aunt and the girls. Maybe not- she wasn’t exactly demonstrative, was she? But just this once, maybe? If things went well and this war was won as quickly as possible because of the heroic state alchemists…

Louis Armstrong rumbles something, and Roy sighs himself out of his thoughts. Maybe he can fantasize after his first major victory.

Three hours and his first attack ~~(murderslaughterexecution)~~ later, he’s vomiting into the sand as Zolf Kimblee (fucking lunatic) laughs near him, all thoughts of Riza Hawkeye forgotten.

* * *

Her father packs with all the sense of the absentminded professor, stuffing his bag with papers and notes and eschewing unimportant things like clothes and shaving kits. Riza enlists Roy and makes him go through her father’s papers, letting him pick out what’s required and what her father is taking because he’s concerned about getting bored or has had a sudden whim. She fills the emptied spaces with enough clothes to last him for a week (he is definitely not going to wash them, and the men from central are not going to fund his research if he shows up smelling like a sewer), and waves away his dark mutters about the kids ganging up on him.

As he gets into the car that will take him to the station, he makes a pointed remark about the vacancy he’s leaving for the man of the house, and loudly hopes Roy would be up for filling it and taking care of his daughter. Riza can read her father’s generally stoic expressions well enough that this doesn’t come as a surprise, but a year of apprenticeship has not provided Roy with the same skills. She can see him blushing from ten feet away, and if he got any more incandescent, she could use his face to cook their dinner.

Roy says something incoherent and vanishes into the house, probably to wallow in his embarrassment. Riza takes the opportunity to gather up the cans she’s been saving since her father’s last trip, along with her grandfather’s guns. It takes her only fifteen minutes to set them up, and she spends the next hour shooting them from varying distances and angles. Two hours later, the cans resemble cheese more closely than they resemble containers. She is also sadly almost out of ammunition. She really had to write to her grandfather to bring her more bullets next time he came over. 

It’s only after she shoots the last bullet that she realizes Roy has been watching her, open-mouthed.

“Where did you learn that?” His voicer is awestruck, and Riza stifles a grin.

“My grandfather,” she tells him, expertly unloading the magazine, “He taught me back when Mother was still alive. He said I had a gift.” 

The look on his face is clearly screaming obviously. “You could be in the military.”

“My father is not very fond of the military.”

“I’m serious,” Roy insists, keeping up with her as she walks to the house, “You could get in easily. I know they are always looking for snipers. And- it’s the most prestigious job anyone could have! You grandfather is a general!”

“I know,” Riza says, “But my father doesn’t like the military. The last time my grandfather suggested he could apply to be a state alchemist, he threw him out of the house.”

“But,” Roy looks almost desperate, “But you’re so good.”

It’s the reverent tone in his voice that gets to her, makes her feel like she’s burning up from the inside. Riza realizes to her absolute mortification that she’s doing a Roy and blushing, and that there seems to be no reasonable way to stop it. 

* * *

She got posted to Ishval before him- State Alchemists were weapons of last resort, while snipers like her were a staple of the war. She’s been here for months- stuck in a tower picking off people one by one, her view as expansive as it is nauseating, before the alchemists arrive.

She’d like to say that she felt something when she first walked them stride into the ground, but that would be have been a lie. This war was wearing down on her nerves and any tender feelings she might have possessed had been long ground to dust. Men clad in white cloaks over blue uniforms walked in, and she watched the area around them impassively, looking for desperate attackers.

Then the world exploded.

It was the one time in her career she could remember freezing up. One state alchemist was clubbed over the head by a screaming Ishvalan (she couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman- the alchemist turned around and did something to their face), and she was too stunned by the scene to even react. Stunned enough that for a moment, she cheered the Ishvalan, urged him to put a stop to it the chaos-

It was enough to shake her out of her stupor. Riza loaded her rifle with shaking hands (damn it all, she thought she’d gotten over this) and trained her scope on the scene. At least this way, she could only see the part in the scope, she could ignore the battlefield- screams and screams and oh god so many screams what were they doing what right did they have to slaughter these people? What right did they have to crush them with stone and slice them open and rain bullets at them from above and burn them alive.  
  
The screams and the burning and the fire-

Oh god the fire. She thought she knew all about fire. She’d seen Roy blow up half the barn and with the same kind of fire. Back then, his lack of control had been mildly hilarious, and fire itself was an ally. Now, when she can smell the charred flesh and see the way flames burn a man-

Her finger clicks on the trigger once on autopilot born of months of experience, and a raging Ishvalan on fire drops before she can charge at her attacker. She sees, just barely, a dark head bent over as a hand gestures, and flames erupting. She realizes after a while that her scope has been trained on him, the finger on the trigger steady but her shoulders trembling. She tells herself that it’s not him she’s aiming it, it’s at the people around him. 

She turned him into this-

She only realizes that she’s crying after the smoke clears.

* * *

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he blurts out.

Riza is studiously working on something at her desk, and only looks up after he speaks. Her hair is a little tousled (he’s so used to seeing it neatly combed that he can’t take his eyes off it), and her face is impassive. Roy feels himself deflating. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting- that she’d not heard the loud, long arguments between him and her father, or heard him pretty much renouncing the man? Not really much of a chance.

Ishval had provoked their borders. His country needed him, and he was not going to leave it stranded. Not even if it meant going against his teacher’s wishes. Now If only he felt quite so motivated when faced with Riza, things would have been much easier.

“Can’t you stay?”

It’s not much, but he’s learned to read her by now. She’s upset. Her hair is tousled. And she’s asking him if he can’t stay. She’s not given up on him, and it makes him so lightheaded with relief that he’s briefly terrified. He wasn’t old enough to feel this way about any woman, was he?

“No. I need- I have to do this. I can’t not do this, you know that.” 

She nods, like she’d been expecting it. He sees her lips droop a little.

“I’ll write,” he says, all in a rush. “Every week.”

“I’ll write back.” she promises after a pause, and he decides to go away before he does something stupid, like gaze adoringly at her till he has to leave.

The next morning, Master Hawkeye is gruff and occupied with a new discovery (Roy knows he’s a smart kid, but he swears the man’s mind works on a whole different level)- and he knows enough by now to realize that’s his way of being upset at his departure, and probably at his choice of career. At least he doesn’t decide to forbid Riza to ride with him to the the station- he just ignores them till they are gone.

For him, it’s enough that Riza comes to send him off, and that just before the train leaves, she kisses him on the cheek and gives him a smile that’s filled with promises. He kisses her back, not blushing at it for the first time that he can remember- Roy may be young and (admittedly) a little reckless, but even he can tell that what they have is precious. 

They write to each other twice a week once he joins the Military Academy (in later years, he has no idea how on earth he ever found time for that), and Roy enjoys taunting his roommate Maes Hughes with long and semi-poetic monologues about his perfect woman of a secret admirer. 

Part of him is convinced that Maes started going out with Garcia just to shut him up.

* * *

Every evening, the officers show him the lists of all their soldiers the Ishvalans have killed. They walk past every state alchemist shuddering in their bedroll to remind them about what they are fighting for. 

Kimblee does not even bother to look at the lists, merely waves the officers along with an insolent smile. Roy briefly fantasizes about strangling the man till he breathes his last, but lets the thought slips away before it can gain any momentum. All the guilt in his heart doesn’t make the burned bodies stop existing. He’s not any better than the psychopath, so what right does he have to judge the man?

Some of the rest close their eyes and listen to the lists being read out, curled into little balls of self-loathing (they’ll never make it very far, Roy tells himself). Others peruse the lists with grim faces, the horrors of the day finally justified by the names of their martyrs. Roy tries his hardest to be part of the second group, and more or less succeeds. He sets his face in firm lines and nods curtly at the officers’ descriptions of Ishvalan evils, as a voice somewhere in his head starts screaming and doesn’t stop.

Hughes tries to help him, mutters into his ear about the damned officers and the damned war and the dissent keeps him a little saner than he would have been otherwise. But Hughes isn’t the one who’s burning children alive, so each passing day makes his words a little less comforting.

For the first time since he cracked the state alchemist exam he is disgusted by alchemy. For the first time in his life, it feels not like his passion but like a tool. A bloodied, dirtied, rabid and dangerous tool that should have been put down long ago.

But he’s taken his oaths, and he knows what happens to deserters in Amestris. His fear drives him onward, always just a little further ahead than his growing hopelessness. He keeps staggering along till one day a blonde woman with a rifle over her shoulder walks up to him, nodding mutely to the greetings and the thanks of his fellow soldiers.

The Hawk’s Eye. Of course. Whyever would it not be her?

They meet eyes, briefly, and he can tell that both of them want to look away. Pretend they were never here, pretend they never saw each other. But Riza finally manages a stiff “sir”, and he returns it with an equally stiff nod. They may not have had the strength left for more (oh god how could she even look at him after all the things he’s done), but at least they have acknowledged each other.

As he turns away, he remembers his daydreams. A pretty woman with soft brown eyes greeting him as he got back from work, the proud and honorable military man-

He doesn’t know which part of the silly little scene is more laughable right now.

* * *

“Thank you for all your help.”

Roy nods, his eyes still fixed on the grave. He’s not sure how to meet her eyes, and he’s terrified of her voice breaking. All those times where he wished she would break down and cry about something (something silly, like a missed shot or not having the newest model of rifle) come back to his mind to mock him with a vengeance. The reality had been far less pleasant than what his imagination had conjured up.

If the unflappable Riza Hawkeye started crying again, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop himself bawling right along with her. 

“He wanted to see you,” she tells him, from somewhere to his right. “He’ll be happy, that he got to see you before he died.”

How does he tell her otherwise? That his master, the man he respected, the father of the girl he… had feelings for (he didn’t even know how to put what she was to him into words how sad was that), had been disappointed in him? That he had been called a dog and a mindless weapon of destruction for tyrants?

“I’m glad I saw him too,” he says instead. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything.”

It had all happened so fast. Mr. Hawkeye choking and coughing, his throat wheezing as he tried to tell Roy his dying words. Roy yelling for Riza, Riza sprinting up and collapsing at her father’s side, both of them desperately hauling him into the car and driving him into the village, only to be told that it was too late and the damage had been too much and the poor man was dying anyway.

Riza, bearing her father’s death with unshed tears and subdued murmurs, making all the arrangements with a level head while he stood around feeling helpless and overwhelmed. Riza, who as soon as they had reached the house again burst into noisy tears and refused to let go of his coat till they had run out. Him, trying his best to hug the pain out of her even as his own tears started flowing. In the end, they had both given in and cried it off, because there was nothing else that they could have done.

He was glad for that today. It wouldn’t have been very proper for a military officer to cry at a funeral; they were all supposed to be stoics. 

"He was sick for a long time,” she says, “It wasn’t a surprise, just-”

“Expected, but upsetting.” 

“Yes.” 

By mutual agreement, they start walking back towards the car. Hawkeye house was still out of the way, and he’s not sure if Riza wants to stay there anymore, not with the specter of her father’s ghost hanging over her. Neither does he want to think of what might happen to a pretty young woman all alone in the house. Was it too early to suggest that she go and live with her grandfather? Given Riza’s skill with firearms, was his worry superfluous? Would she be offended by him trying to bully his grandfather into taking her on? Did she have enough to eat? How much money did Master Hawkeye put away? Where-

Roy shuts himself up and climbs into the passenger seat, leaning his head back and listening to the door open and close on her side. Then there’s silence and her hand slides into his, and he can feel a smile threatening to break out despite everything that day has been so far.

“His work,” Riza says after a few moments, “He wouldn’t have wanted it to go to waste.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted it to serve the military either,” Roy replies with a sigh, “Riza-”

“He entrusted it to me,” Riza interrupts, “And I think- I think that you should have it. It should serve our country, not rot away into nothingness on my back.”

He so startled that he doesn’t notice the precise words she’s chosen. Instead, he sees her shoulders straighten up, and her chin set in that stubborn tilt which means that neither him nor Master Hawkeye was going to win that particular disagreement, and feels his mouth tug into a smile and something long-familiar by now flutter into being in his stomach.

“Let’s go home,” she says, and he agrees.

* * *

Alcohol flows like water in Ishval. While it is technically frowned upon, the officers turn a blind eye to the bottles of hard drinks being passed from one hand to another. If that’s what it took to keep their men content, then so be it. It was not like the occasionally soldier who exhibited violent tendencies was a disadvantage, here and now. 

Roy doesn’t indulge, if only out of a perverse desire to punish himself. He continues to feels nauseous and alert every day after he’s done, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh which he’d ignored when concentrating on his alchemy finally penetrating his senses. Kimblee notices, and helpfully tells him to forget that it’s people. Imagine it’s meat cooking on a spit-

The nausea turns into full-blown vomiting, and it’s only Hughes firm words and firmer hand over his shoulder that keeps him from strangling the bastard. 

Hughes does that all the time now; talks and talks and talks. About ridiculous, unimportant stuff. How itchy their clothes are, how uptight the officers are. He says everything with a half smile and a laugh, talks nonstop about his fiancee, keeps his demons at bay with hope. If Roy hadn’t witnessed him cowering in his bedroll the last night, he would have suspected the man was inhuman.

Roy tries to do what Maes does, imagines Riza and him in a future far, far away from here. That lasts until he sees an invisible shot explode the head of another Ishvalan. He shelves his pathetic wants and listens to Hughes instead, envisioning a life worth living vicariously through his friend.

The days pass, the war moving onward with alacrity. Amestris has had an unprecedented victory in Ishval, least causalities (for their side), minimum time for conquest. The war is won, Ishval is gone and the state alchemists experiment was declared a resounding success. 

It’s during the aftermath, the strange transit between the war being over and them being shipped back to Central for their commendations (commendations for murderers, now that is hilarious) that Riza comes up to him and lets her mask slip off her face. Lets herself rave as much as she’s possible of raving (on her, that means a three-second outburst, he notices affectionately), begs him to burn the secrets of flame alchemy off her skin.

“I do not want to bear this burden anymore,” she says.

“I do not want to create another monster,” he hears.

Agreed and agreed.

* * *

“How could he do that?!”

Her father’s funeral is still fresh in her mind, and she finds it hard to be happy right now. But Roy’s hysterically high-pitched voice makes her smile a little.

“I was his daughter, and not an alchemist.” She said, “I was his legacy, same as his work. It made perfect sense to him, I think.”

“But-but-” Roy splutters, “But on your back. Riza-”

“I agreed to it, Roy,” she tells him. “Maybe I didn’t ask for it, but I’m proud to bear it. And- and I think that you deserve to have it.”

He blushes worse, something she didn’t even think was possible. Roy was not all that prone to blushing after he had come back from training, but she supposes seeing her in a loose shirt telling him that his coveted alchemy information was not in some safe book somewhere but tattooed on to her back was enough to bypass those walls. Riza feels a little scandalous herself, really.

“Riza,” he begins weakly, eyes jumping from the shirt to her face, “I don’t think you have to- maybe we should take some time to- you are still upset. It’s too soon.”

Of course she was upset. That was maybe part of the whole point.

“Riza,” he repeats, voice calmer this time and blush fading from his face as he reasserts control. “It’s too soon. You should- sleep on it or something. Take some time-” 

“Roy,” she says, “Do you want to be a state alchemist? Be a soldier? A general, someday?”

“I-”

“My grandfather wrote to me. He said you had potential. He might also have been matchmaking.”

Roy groans and buries his face in his hand, blush coming back with a vengeance.

“I trust you.”

There’s as much quiet weight as she can possibly put being those words, and she sees his back straighten at that. Sees his embarrassment being replaced with something like pride and hope.

Riza turns her back to him, and lets the robe slip off.

He can’t see his face, but she hears his breath hitch. Feels him turn up the light of the lamp, feels him come closer to her as close as he can get without touching her. Feels his eyes rake over the symbols and the diagrams and-

His finger touches her shoulderblade, and they both jump. Riza holds her shirt closer to her chest, and she hears Roy mutter something that could be either a curse or an apology-

“Roy?” 

“I-” his voice squeaks for a moment, before he gets it under control “Ah. It’s complicated. I’ll need books. I’ll need some time- I think he used three different codes to write this.” 

That did sound like her father.

“You might have to stay like that for a while,” he hesitates, all embarrassment washed away by the excitement of a new alchemical find, “You should lie down it’ll give me better access-”

He stops when his brain catches up with his words, and groans again, and Riza realizes that she’s smiling.

Eventually, she ends up lying on her front in the bed (he blushes more when they decide on that, but it makes the most sense), reading a book as he mutters and makes notes above her. Sometime halfway through the night when she’s mostly asleep, his fingers touch her back again.

“Is that-” she hears him swallow, “is that all right?”

“Yes,” she says, her own hand going back over his, pressing it to her skin. “It’s fine.”

Contrary to all the rumors floating around the village after those days they spent together in the house, nothing much really happened. There was maybe too much grief for that, too much of a reminder of her father floating around with her tattoo. But they grow used to each other’s touches, and Roy’s blushing dies down. 

By the time he decodes the tattoo, they have an unspoken agreement. Nowhere near as formal as an engagement, (not with Amestris at war and him going to the frontlines) but for them it didn’t have to be.

* * *

Roy badgers Hughes for anesthetics and antiseptics, and the man gets them and hands it over to him without comment. He’s not sure what Maes thinks he’s going to do with them, but at least he’s assured him that all plans of suicide are off the table.

He meets Riza at the tower they call the Hawk’s Roost, and is unsurprised to find it excessively neat. They cover the windows with their coats by mutual agreement (The last thing either of them wants to see are the fireworks, the _celebration_ ) and he lays his paltry medical tools in a neat row on a piece of clean cloth.

He’s not sure how exactly it happened, somewhere between yet another explosion (he knows it’s just fireworks, but he can’t stop shaking when he hears the sound) and the lamp snuffing out again, Riza is in his arms and desperately kissing his lips. Roy returns it with all the fervor he can muster, pouring in all his frustration into it. 

This was not what it was supposed to be like. Their next kiss was supposed to be sweet and romantic and a precursor to him asking for her hand in marriage. Not harsh and desperate and heavy with the knowledge that nothing was every going to be as they imagined. There’s no backing down and no going back, and with that in mind they clutch desperately at each other till it hurts a little less.

He wakes up before she does, and starts work on her back in early dawn light. Anesthetizes her before she wakes up, and uses his left glove for the first time in what feels like eternity. 

It’s only the knowledge that it’s Riza lying under his murderers hands that stops him from charring away everything about flame alchemy. Instead he singes as little of the skin as he can as lightly as he can, banishing the knowledge back into the flames. 

* * *

Riza likes it in the city. It’s loud and chaotic and comfortable, and it’s full of people who don’t mind her reticence. Central was good place for people who tended to keep to themselves- the noise of the city cancels out her quietness, and it feels far more like home in four months than her house did in years. The only thing that’s missing is Roy Mustang.

They meet at a little cafe in Central a day after Roy passes his State Alchemist’s exam, grinning about having evaded a nosy someone called Maes Hughes and with his brand new pocket watch casually peeking out of his jacket. Roy had been out of town for training exercises in the East at about the same time she’d joined the Academy (it was something he’d grumbled loudly about, both of them heading to where the other was at the exact same time and missing each other in the process), and he’d been locked up in his quarters cramming for the State alchemist’s exam since he’d gotten back a week ago. This is the first time in months that she’s seen him, and the familiar planes of his face makes her smile.

“Riza,” he greets her, sitting down with a flourish.

“Flame Alchemist,” she replies, stirring sugar into her coffee. Roy preens at the new title and Riza takes a sip to hide her smile. 

For a while they simply sit there, a little island of happy conversation is a sea of hurrying citizens. They have a lot to talk about- people back at their old home, people in their new home. The worst teachers of the Academy and the best. Urban legends and hilarious conspiracy theories (Maes Hughes, she is told, is a huge fan of them). His aunt, her grandfather. The waitress, Catherine, fills up their cups without prompting and mouths “he’s cute” to Riza when her back is to Roy. It is lazy and domestic and joyful, and Riza loves it.

Almost an hour passes before Roy finally ventures to ask about her terms of service.

“I’m graduating next month.” she tells him.

He gapes. “You’ve only been training for two months.”

“They need snipers, and I have good scores.”

“You don’t have good scores, you have excellent scores,” he corrects her. “I compared them to Maes shooting scores and he accused me of making them up just to make him look bad. Not that he needs help with that. But isn’t this a little too soon?”

“The war is going badly,” Riza reminds him, and sees his face fall back into seriousness. Everyone knows the war is going badly. Their superior military might was matched pretty evenly by the Ishvalans’ survival skills. The desert was a harsh mistress, and they knew how to use it to their advantage. What should have been an easy war had dragged on for too long and cost too many lives. Riza was used to her father’s angry murmurs about the futility of war, but she understood the need- the want- to defend themselves.

She loves her country, irascible generals and rainy days and all. She knows that laying down her life for it is not a matter of duty, but of honor. 

“It’s our country,” Roy says, understanding perfectly.

“We’ll keep it safe,” Riza promises.

“And after we do we should-” Roy begins, and stops mid-sentence with his ears burning red. She watches him with interest, and pretends not to notice when he tries to continue twice and fails.

“We should- talk,” he finally manages, addressing the table, “After.”

“We should,” she agrees.

* * *

As the city is rejoicing their victory, (central loves the military, even as other towns hate them.), they meet at her favorite cafe. Even without their uniforms, the waitress (Katrina? Cathy?) recognizes her. Her smile is bright and cheerful and she gives them dessert on the house. For the brave soldiers who fought in the war.

She can see Roy twitch, wanting to throw the cakes back in her face. So Riza traps his feet beneath hers, smiles and blandly answers the woman’s questions until she decides that the young man is grumpy because he needs to ask her something important, and leaves them with bright eyes and a knowing smile.

It would have been a lovely day for a proposal, really, sunshine and all. Instead her coffee tastes like ash and she can see Roy’s fists clenching on the tablecloth, because there is no coming back from burned corpses lining the streets. 

“How’s your back?” He finally asks, picking up his fork.

“Sore,” she admits. 

“Burns are like that,” he says, “It may take another month to heal.” 

They eat in near-complete silence for a while. Or rather, she forces herself to swallow her food (her body needs the food, especially now that it has to heal itself) and he pushes his food around the plate into different patterns. At one point, she can make out a vague alchemical circle made of mashed potatoes, before the fork viciously mashes up into the peas.

“Maes and Garcia are getting married next month,” he says finally, “We’re all invited.”

This isn’t really a surprise. Riza has seen Hughes pour all his heart and soul and hopes on the girl he left behind, holding on to his sanity using his love for Garcia as the anchor. Maes has made himself more rightly a survivor of Ishval than she or Roy will ever be. Garcia would probably spend her life thinking that her husband was a brave man who defended the country, never realizing that she’s saved him more than he’d ever saved her.

She wonders if they could have had that, in a slightly different world where they made vastly different choices, then dismisses the thoughts. Might haves and should have beens were not going to help them, not on this path where the road was going to be hard and the ending could, if they were really damned lucky, be bittersweet. 

* * *

“It’s going to be a pretty wedding,” Roy says after a while, his voice carefully devoid of any longing whatsoever.

“I’m sure it will be,” Riza replies.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction since *checks* 2013. Wow. And in all fairness I that is a continuing state of existence because 98% of this was written and entombed in my laptop for years because i kept trying to make it say more stuff. I am now unsure of what stuff it was trying to say. Them's the breaks.


End file.
